


private eyes

by palmviolet



Series: prompt fills [5]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Animated GIFs, Crime Drama, F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Prosecutor!Joyce, basically a law & order au, kind of xmas vibes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2020-11-09 02:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20845673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmviolet/pseuds/palmviolet
Summary: “c’mon, work with me.”she quirks an eyebrow, smiles a little around the flat rejection that falls from her lips. “i’m a prosecutor, not a detective. i win cases, i don’t solve them. that’s your job.” the perfect amount of emphasis on the ‘your’; a lifetime of fighting her battles before judge, jury and the american flag has taught her well.“i think we could make a pretty good team.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this story contains animated gifs corresponding to certain scenes. you can reblog the masterpost on tumblr here:  
https://palmviolet.tumblr.com/post/188065296061/jopper-autumn-challenge-day-one-leaves-or
> 
> be warned, myriad inaccuracies within. everything i know about the law, the police department and even new york comes from law & order lmao you were warned
> 
> this is inspired by the prompt 'detectives' for day 1 of the jopper autumn challenge.
> 
> EDIT 8/10/20 - a note regarding ACAB:
> 
> this fic was inspired by the show law and order, which is cop propaganda. throughout the fic i have tried never to glamorise any of it. much of the plot is concerned with following legal procedure to its letter in the pursuit of justice - however due to the nature of the source material and my own unconscious biases, instances of propaganda may still have slipped through. please proceed with that in mind.

“C’mon, work with me.”

She quirks an eyebrow, smiles a little around the flat rejection that falls from her lips. “I’m a prosecutor, not a detective. I win cases, I don’t solve them. That’s your job.” The perfect amount of emphasis on the ‘your’; a lifetime of fighting her battles before judge, jury and the American flag has taught her well.

“I think we could make a pretty good team.”

The laughter in her eyes dies. She bites her lip, looks away. She’s beautiful tonight, he thinks. Not that she isn’t always, but tonight is something special. Less buttoned up than usual. Hair in a messy updo, black dress exposing pale shoulders and throat. “None of this is legit, is it?”

“Legit?”

She laughs. “I mean, for god’s sake, you’re working fraud. A missing kid? That’s a whole different thing. That’s Major Crimes’ jurisdiction. Not yours, and certainly not mine.”

“Please.” He’s desperate.

She sees that he’s desperate. She reads it in his voice, in his eyes, in his posture. He’s an open book, and she’s a quick study. “Okay.”

And then they’re a team.

\--

It starts one cold December day in a stuffy, melting hot courtroom. She’s fiery and brilliant, and the only reason he hasn’t yet fallen asleep in his chair. That, and the four coffees he’s had this morning.

The prosecutor isn’t new, but somehow he’s never really spoken to her before. Maybe because he’s so averse to court. She’s getting her point across, he can tell that much. The jury are listening eagerly - because she doesn’t sound so much like the other Harvard-educated prosecutors he knows. She uses turns of phrase and lets emotion bleed into her voice, such that she doesn’t sound as fake as all the rest. Of course, he knows that that too could be merely an act. These lawyers - they’re wily. Cunning. You can’t trust them as far as you can throw them - that’s a fact.

Still. He enjoys watching her.

Dark hair pulled up and away from her fair, angular face. Dark eyes that widen with passion, or outrage, or sympathy - always turned towards the jury, of course. He’d expect nothing less. The angry flush that rises on her cheeks when the judge denies an objection, or the triumph when he sustains it. If he so chose, Hopper could trace her jawline, down her neck, to her collarbone peeping out of her starched white shirt - but he won’t. He views all lawyers with a general sort of disdain, attractive or not.

Then it’s his turn.

He gives a summary account of the case, all very boring, all very mundane. Fraud isn’t the most interesting thing in the world, he’s noticed. But boring is good. Boring is safe.

Less boring is eye contact with her. It’s nearly the end of this trial, she knows she’s all but won. Her gaze is triumphant, but not arrogant. He gets the sense she’s appraising him just as much as he is her. She takes her time with the questioning, lets the full scale of her victory bleed through her very word. She’s enjoying this. (Maybe he is too.)

He can sense when she’s beginning to wind up. “In your opinion, who was more influential? Whose initiative was this scheme?”

The defense shoots to his feet. “Objection! Relevance?” He looks hopelessly to the judge, who shakes his head.

“I should think the relevance is obvious. Denied.”

The defense sinks back down and the prosecutor smiles slightly. “Please, Detective Hopper.”

“Blackwell, for sure. He’s in his fifties, Higgins is only sixteen. The kid was manipulated for sure. All the paperwork was in Blackwell’s apartment. We didn’t find any of it in Higgins’. Sure, Higgins ran the business, but he’s a minor. He was coerced and I’m pretty sure it felt like his only option.”

Her faint smile grows, and with it his impression that it’s reserved only for him. The jury doesn’t seem to notice, anyway. Nor does Blackwell himself, shifting uncomfortably beside his lawyer. Hopper holds her gaze.

“Objection! Speculation?”

The judge sighs. “Miss Horowitz, please clarify your questioning.”

The prosecutor’s smile dips only briefly. “What do you mean by ‘his only option’?”

“Well, he’s a troubled kid. History of foster homes and criminality from the age of ten. When you’re raised in that environment- well. I’m no expert, but I’ve seen it before. Good kids go to bad homes and then they feel like they have no option.”

“And Blackwell? Did he have an option?”

Hopper nods. “He’s been in the business thirty years. His finances check out, it’s not like the shop was in trouble. He had plenty of options before turning to crime.”

The smile plucks at the corners of red lips, widening until he’s sure everyone can see. God, she’s smug. Or maybe just right - because when the judge’s gavel falls, Blackwell has been sentenced and put away and Horowitz is gathering her things with the air of a champion.

Hopper steps over to her table, a little in awe, a little hostile still. Lawyers are slimy bastards. (Nevermind that this one is beautiful, and fiery. She’s still a lawyer.)

“Hey,” he says. She doesn’t pause in her packing up, though she spares him a brief, surprised glance.

“Yeah? What is it?”

He shrugs. “Nothing, I just- I haven’t seen you around, is all. And you’re goddamn good.”

Then she does pause. “Thanks,” she says, and is that a note of caution in her voice? “I- um, I haven’t been in the office for a while. My son- he’s been sick.”

“Oh, sorry. I hope he’s okay.” He means it, really he does. Not that he knows why he’s sticking around and talking to her in the first place.

“Yeah, uh-” She’s chewing on a nail, he notices. A nervous habit she didn’t once display when court was in session. “He’s okay now. Thanks.”

The conversation has clearly tailed off, since she’s glancing alternately at the door and her watch, so he steps back. “I guess I’ll see you in court sometime.”

“Yeah. Guess so.” He’s walking away when she spoke again - “And hey, nice work on your testimony.”

“Thanks,” he says, turning to look at her. She’s finished packing up and is walking down the other aisle, tripping along in heels that click on the floor. Maybe he shouldn’t look so long - but what the hell. She’s gorgeous.

Before he can stop himself, he’s hurrying to catch up with her. They’re in the corridor when she turns and looks at him, quirking an eyebrow. “Something else?”

“I-” He suddenly feels like a fool. “You doing anything tonight? You wanna, y’know, go out for a drink? Celebrate a successful case?”

She narrows her eyes, slender fingers toying with the strap of her satchel. Then to his surprise she smiles, and her whole face brightens with it. “Sure, why not. I can’t be out too late though. I got kids, remember?”

He smiles too. “Sure. I’ll have you home before your carriage turns into a pumpkin.”

Six o’clock - “You look like a redneck out of your uniform,” she says, as she drops into the barstool beside him.

He shrugs. He’d changed into jeans and a flannel shirt which, yeah, okay, is more rural than New York really called for. “What about you? You ever not dress like a senator?”

She quirks an eyebrow. “I haven’t had time to change. I was in the office ten minutes ago.”

“Another case?”

“You know I can’t discuss that,” she says, the edge of a smile in her voice. She signals to the bartender, and a moment later a tumbler of bourbon is placed on the bar in front of her.

“You a regular here, then?”

She nods. “You’re a detective, I’m sure you’ve worked out this is our equivalent of your cop bars.”

“Nearest decent joint to court. More than decent, judging by the price of the beer.” He takes another swig. “I don’t think I ever caught your name.”

“Why, for a cop you’re not very streetwise. Going out with a woman whose name you don’t know?” She smirks into her glass. “Joyce Horowitz. It was Byers, for a pretty shitty few years, but that asshole’s long gone.”

“Divorced?” She nods. “Me too.”

She studies him for a moment. “To shitty exes?” she says, raising her glass and her tone so it sounds more like a question.

“To shitty exes,” he repeats, clinking his drink against hers. “Jim Hopper,” he says after he’d taken a sip.

“Y’know, I was sure you’d turn out to be Homicide. Gruff guy like you, working antiques fraud cases? There something I need to know about?”

He shrugs, not meeting her eyes. “I used to work Homicide. It got… a lot.” She bites her lip, clearly sensing the dip in tone, and with an effort he regains his smile. “So, you got kids?”

As he’d expected, her face brightens and the tension she’s been holding- well, pretty much all day- evaporates. “Yeah, two. Jonathan and Will. The only good things that came from my piece-of-shit ex. Jonathan’s sixteen, Will is twelve.”

“I guess work keeps you pretty busy, though. Must be tough not seeing them much.”

To his surprise, she bristles. “If you’re saying-”

“Hey, I’m not saying anything. I just know what it’s like, is all.”

“Oh? You have kids?” She still looks wary.

Again, he looks away. “Used to.” He isn’t gonna elaborate on that, not now. He’s had enough of sympathy leading women into bed with him. “So I get it.”

She’s chewing on a nail again, and he has the ridiculous urge to take her wrist and guide her hand away. But he doesn’t - he’s only one beer in. “Sorry,” she says. “It’s just- well- people look at me, single mom, working these long hours, bringing work home with me, and they tend to get judgy.”

“I’m sure your boys are great,” he says, as he signals for another beer, and quickly moves the conversation on. Moves it on so smoothly that three beers later they’re outside with his lips on her neck and they’re hailing a cab, pressed close to each other like it’s two in the morning instead of eight at night. “My place or yours?” he whispers into her hair.

“Yours,” she says breathlessly. They make it to his and then they have glorious, tipsy sex in his unmade bed. He takes great pleasure in the sight of her flushed, and undressed, and wanton in the light of his bedside lamp. The put-together prosecutor skillfully taken apart.

“You have any cigarettes?” she sighs as she sits up.

Wordlessly he hands her the pack from his bedside table and leans over to light it, enjoying the way the flame illuminates a bead of sweat on her neck. He takes one for himself and then they smoke in silence, the only sound the rush of New York traffic outside. “So that was-”

“Good,” she finishes, without looking at him.

“Yeah, I mean, y’know what they say- detectives and lawyers-”

“Pretty sure that’s prosecutors and defense,” she says, glancing at him with a faint smirk in the gloom. “Cops have nothing to do with it.”

“You sure about that?” He lets his hand wander up her leg under the covers.

She’s smiling, but she brushes him off. “I gotta go. Kids, remember? God, it’s nearly nine.”

He watches her dress with faint disappointment, though he can’t help but smirk at her newly dishevelled appearance. Her hair has come out of its neat updo and is long and tangled around her face and her lipstick is most definitely smudged. She’s nearly out the door when he remembers - “You not gonna give me your number?”

She looks back at him, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “No point. I’ll see you at the Christmas party, right?”

The Christmas party. Right.

\--

He’s imbibing a litre of gritty coffee after a long night at his desk when the case is all but dropped in his lap. Bauman - a wiry, determined creep from CSU - perches unsolicited on his desk and, while cleaning his glasses on a rag that looks like it came from the gutter, says, “You know they’re shelving that kid who went missing.”

Slowly, Hopper looks up. “What kid?” Because this is New York. Missing kids are a dime a dozen.

“Jane Ives. Twelve, disappeared a couple months back? Well, they found her, but she couldn’t tell them anything about her captor. Nothing. And there were no forensics to be found - trust me, I looked.”

“So that’s it? The guy gets away with it?”

Bauman nods. “Jim, it was pretty fucking horrific. The kid was kept in a basement with no food for a week. She had to lick water off the walls.”

His stomach turns. Already, he’s making plans to snatch this case from inept hands and get some justice for this poor girl, which is no doubt what Bauman intended from the start. “Let’s skip the bullshit, huh? Give me the file.”

As if by magic, he produces the file from behind his back. “Be discreet, okay? You’re not a civilian but it’s still basically vigilantism. And you’re gonna need some legal help. They had a suspect, but with the lack of evidence on top of his sleazy goddamn lawyer they couldn’t pin him down.”

Hopper doesn’t respond, already immersed in the file. It’s thick enough to keep him occupied for a while, and just neutral enough that he knows Bauman is right. Even if he does find the guy - charge him, even - there’s no way he’d win in court. He’s gotta be smart about the evidence he gets, and put bluntly he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s looking for.

He knows a woman who would, though.

So, he chooses the Christmas party. It’s the following evening, two whole weeks before Christmas, hosted by lawyers for lawyers and cops alike. (If it was up to him they’d all have congregated in a bar and drank beer and played pool but he’s definitely not the classiest person on the force.) He turns up to the hotel an hour late with the file burning a hole under his jacket, still in his uniform because he’s too lazy to change. Besides, he wouldn’t fit in in a suit either, so it’s pointless anyway. May as well look like an idiot with minimal effort.

He clocks Joyce almost immediately. Sitting on a chaise sipping champagne in a dress that almost makes him forget why he’s here. But it doesn’t - not quite. He’s halfway over to her before he can change his mind. Sits down, shows her the file with a discreet glance around. This is all off-book. He tells her the facts, and knows instinctively it’s the kind of case she can’t say no to. Not as a mother. Not when Jane is the same age as Will.

“C’mon, work with me,” he finishes, sitting back and trying to look persuasive. He’s not sure what he’s gonna do if she says no. He’s not exactly friendly with any of the other prosecutors. Hell, he’s not sure he’s friendly with her. They went for a drink, once, and had sex, once, and now he’s asking her to put her job on the line.

But still. He likes to think the sex was good, at least.

“Y’know, you’re goddamn lucky,” she says to him outside, ten minutes after she’s agreed and led him outside for a smoke. It’s freezing, their breaths fogging in the night air, and the sky is heavy with the promise of snow. “I’m already busy. And this isn’t just a case, is it? You’re working this completely alone.”

“Not alone,” he reminds her, perhaps a little redundantly.

She laughs, the sound loud and unexpected. “You’re an ass, you know that? Let me get this clear. I’m not your partner. Like I said, I’m a prosecutor, not a detective. I can’t find your evidence for you.”

He shrugs. “Sure. I’m not asking you to.”

She raises an eyebrow as she drops her cigarette and steps on it, moving closer as she does. “I’m not your girlfriend either,” she says softly.

“I never said you were.” He doesn’t flinch, although her breath is ghosting over his cheek and she’s impossibly beautiful this cold, cold evening.

“Good. Just so we’re clear.” She steps back, and is it him or is there disappointment in her eyes? “What’s your number? I’ll look over the file and I’ll call you.”

He gives it to her, trying not to let his heart race when his phone pings with her text. “Maybe I’ll call you.”

“Maybe you’ll call me,” she allows, as she melts into the winter night and the first few flakes of snow begin to fall.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!! this is born out of me watching far too much law & order lmao and badass joyce is my weakness so....
> 
> yeah as you can see joyce is slightly different to canon in this fic, because obviously she went to law school and stuff and is therefore more confident etc
> 
> let me know what you think! further chapters coming soon xx


	2. Chapter 2

He does indeed call her. He calls her with a lead, their first, maybe (hopefully) their last. The original suspect in the case, the guy they couldn’t nail down because of evidence and other legal crap that dissolved into irrelevance the second Hopper saw the cold look in his eyes. Brenner did it, he’s sure. He’s not sure of much else.

“You think it’s him?” Joyce’s voice is faint, distracted over the phone. There’s ambient noise - people talking, a TV?

“Yeah, Joyce, I do.” Hopper is still at his desk, bleary-eyed, three open cases already cluttering up his evidence wall. He’s reduced to thinking about Jane Ives on weekends, holidays, and obscenely late nights.

“Well, great, if you can get me some evidence. If not, no dice.”

“Yeah, but I mean-”

“Cut the crap, Detective. This is why you brought me on board, remember? To tell you when you haven’t got enough. And I’m telling you, you haven’t got enough.”

He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Maybe you can meet me, we can talk it over?”

“I’m so fucking busy this week, my office is like a shitstorm, it might have to wait until-” She’s cut off by someone’s shout, the reedy voice of a kid. _“Mom! Dinner’s burning!”_ “Oh, fuck,” she says, audibly setting her phone down, following it with another impressive stream of obscenities. “Will, get me that bowl, maybe we- maybe we can salvage some of this mess before Jonathan gets home.”

Hopper listens in silence, a smile growing on his face. It’s a long way from the Joyce Horowitz he saw in court, that’s for sure. He finds he prefers this one.

They don’t talk for long after that. She has to rescue her dinner and he- well. He’s got a date with a fat slice of pizza from the food cart outside and the two cans of beer in his fridge. Only, when he gets home, still chewing on a greasy piece of crust, he sits down with his manila folder instead. He doesn’t know - something about this case. Something about that kid’s haunted eyes. And he’s dragged Joyce into it now, so he can’t exactly let it go.

It’s been a while since he had a decent case. Something he actually cared about, something with actual victims. (It’s hard to care about eighty-year-old millionaires who buy three-hundred-year-old cabinets that are actually only twenty.) If this all goes badly- if he doesn’t solve it, if he doesn’t get the guy and pin him down-

He doesn’t like to think what might happen. There’s a reason, after all, he was taken off Homicide. By a mutual decision, of course, but it was still a very valid one. Sara ruined his marriage and his job and his life, all in one.

He can’t be blamed for trying to get some of it back, can he?

Morning finds him sore from sleeping on the couch all night, the folder still spread out before him, sticky fingerprints on the front. He really has to stop eating pizza on the job.

Wincing in the sunlight he stands up and makes an attempt at freshening up - brushing his teeth, passing a comb through his hair, smoothing down the rumples in his shirt - before his phone begins to ring. _Can’t it wait?_ he thinks to himself, until he realises it’s ten to ten and he was due at work over an hour ago.

“Hopper,” he says, fumbling for his coat.

“Just passed your desk. Owens does not look happy this bright sunny morn’.” Murray’s voice is, as usual, sharp and waspish. Hopper groans at the mention of his boss, since he’s overdue a slap on the wrist anyway. This will just make it worse. “Where the hell are you, Jim, I wanted to go talk to the girl today-”

“I’m coming, okay? I-” He swallows. Bauman isn’t exactly the least abrasive choice. “Why don’t we hold off on that for a bit. I got a better idea.”

He hangs up before the inevitable outraged scoff and heads off - not to work, where the minutes by which he’s late are steadily increasing, but in the opposite direction.

Joyce has got a nice little shiny plaque on her door.

He knocks, once, twice, but before he can enter some woman comes up to him and guides him away. “She’s in a meeting right now, you should come back later.”

Hopper shakes his head. “I need to see her now. Detective Hopper? She might have mentioned me?”

The woman, though she’s a foot shorter than him, manages to look down her nose at him. “Never heard of you,” she says contemptuously, and bids him to sit. The reception area - such as it is - is bright and airy, and warm despite the cold outside. White walls, warm wooden panelling. A sad houseplant in the corner that’s only two steps from the grave.

He’s been reduced to playing Spider Solitaire on his phone when she finally arrives. Shedding her coat as she moves, she walks right past him until he stands up and clears his throat. She turns and- well. Will he ever stop that sharp intake of breath at the very sight of her? Probably not. He probably shouldn’t have had sex with her, in truth. It might have made it easier to ignore if he hadn’t.

She steps closer, brushing her hair behind her shoulders. It’s loose today, only slightly pinned up behind her ears. Her dress - a formal, elegant forest green - is fitted enough to be distracting, but he tries his best. Really, he does.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. She’s slightly out of breath - from the cold, from the hike up the stairs, he doesn’t know.

“I know you said you were busy-”

“Which I am.”

“-But I was thinking, I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk to the girl alone. And Bauman wants to come with me but he’s not exactly- well, friendly- and then I thought of you-”

She quirks an eyebrow and tugs him into her office without another word. “I’m pretty sure the receptionist is spying on me,” she says, when she’s released him and stepped away. The spot on his wrist where she touched him burns. “So- what. You want me to come with you to talk to this Jane Ives?”

He nods. On reflection, it was the kind of thing he could have put in a text.

She bites her lip. Looks down, moves away to her desk, and returns with- is that a manila folder of her own? “So, I know I said I was busy, but…” She trails off. “After I made a hideous mess of dinner last night I did some digging, called in a favor or two. I found you some real evidence, which is something you seem to never have heard of. You owe me, Hop. Big time.”

He flips through the folder. And, well, she did it. Brenner’s alibi, shot to pieces. The logs from his work, where he claimed to have been that night, showing he never even showed up in the first place.

“He tried to delete them. Lucky my guy’s ridiculously good with computers. Not sure this is admissible, of course, but it proves we’re on the right course. We get something else, I can get a subpoena for these and then we can probably get him in a line up.”

“Holy shit,” he says softly, looking at her. She’s flushed with triumph, still looking tired and frazzled but vital and vibrant and god he wants to kiss her right fucking now. But he can’t, because they’re professionals, and she’s not his girlfriend, and there’s a little girl out there who needs them to get her justice.

He clears his throat and leans a little further back in his chair. “Okay, so… you’ll come with me? To interview Jane Ives?”

She looks at him, gaze steady and measured. “Yeah. I’ll come with you to interview Jane Ives.” She smiles. “Someone has to make sure you get some real evidence for a change.”

He’s bursting with affection. “Has anyone ever told you you’d make a great detective?”

She holds his stare. “Better than you.”

—

It takes them a week. They’re both busy; that’s true. Hopper’s nervous; that’s also true. He doesn’t know why. She’s gorgeous, okay, and he’s tongue-tied, less okay. He finds himself imagining ridiculous scenarios by which he might impress her, which is bound to make it worse. Impressing her should be the thing furthest from his mind, while it lingers exasperatingly on the forefront.

Finally, he gets the time and the balls to schedule a meeting. Seven o’clock Thursday, pm, because the kid has school and a myriad other things to do. He advises her that her mother should be present. The kid declines.

They meet not at her house, as Hopper would have thought, but at a diner a couple blocks away, a greasy one that serves fries and little else. He’s not sure it’s Joyce’s kind of place, until he sees her tucking in with gusto and has to reevaluate everything he’s thought about her up till now. “You didn’t get any lunch?” he can’t resist quipping as he watches, their guest yet to arrive.

She glares at him, and answers around a mouthful of food. “It was a tough day, okay?”

“Okay,” he replies, trying not to grin.

Jane Ives is nothing like he expected. She’s tough, or at least she seems it. She comes accompanied by an older girl, at least eighteen, with dark skin and dark eyes and a dangerous look, whom she claims is her sister. The first thing the girl says when she’s sat down- “I can testify.”

Joyce leans in. “Against who?”

“Brenner. I can testify against him. He took me too, a long time ago.”

He and Joyce share a glance. A pattern of behaviour- multiple kids- the jury will lap that shit up. “How do you know it was him?” Hopper looks at her hard, and she doesn’t flinch.

“I saw him. He wasn’t so cautious back then. Jane didn’t see him, but everything was the same. It was him again.”

“Jane?” Joyce’s voice is painfully soft. “Do you think you can tell us what you remember?”

The kid swallows. She’s tough, sure, but she looks scared too. Hopper is reminded of Sara, and then he has to look away. “I was drugged,” she says quietly. “That Saturday. I was coming home from shopping with my friend Max and he- well, someone stabbed me with a needle. I woke up in a basement. I never saw him, but he kept talking to me. _Stay calm. It’s okay. This is for your own good._ That’s what he said.” She shudders.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Joyce reach across the table and take her hand.

“Do you think, if we maybe got him in a line-up, you could identify him? By his voice?”

Slowly, Jane nods.

He and Joyce share another loaded glance. This is all good news, thus far. This is all a sign they can get him. Kali - the older girl - might be all the proof they need for a subpoena. They get a subpoena, they get a warrant for his work records. They get his work records, they get him in a line-up. They get him in a line-up-

They get him in court.

It’s a process, sure, but it’s also progress being made. It’s justice, for the little girl who’s tough but frightened.

Kali gives him a look over her shoulder as they leave. “You’ll get Brenner, right?” she asks, and suddenly she sounds like a child.

“Yeah,” he says, though he’s not accustomed to making such promises. “Yeah, we- we’ll get him. He’s not gonna do this again, I promise.”

Fateful words, words they’re trained not to say. Joyce is looking at him, he realises when the two girls have gone. She’s looking at him and he winces, sure she’s about to chide him for it. But instead she just smiles a little. “I don’t blame you,” she says.

“What?”

“Those two girls. There’s something about them, right? You wanna help them. I get it. I do too.” She lights a cigarette and almost automatically he plucks it proffered from between her fingers.

“We can’t lose this case, Joyce.” His voice is low, serious. “I can’t.”

“We won’t,” she affirms, looking up at him in the dark. “We won’t. Hey, how about we spend the evening going over Kali’s file, huh? There’s gotta be a record of her kidnapping, right? We can corroborate her story, give us something to support the subpoena.”

He’s grateful to her for sensing that he can’t spend the night alone. He nods, taking another drag of the cigarette and looking at the light-polluted sky. “It’s gonna snow again,” he says.

“We better get inside then,” she says in return, and all but drags him down the street.

Two am finds them in her apartment - he couldn’t tell you why it’s hers, rather than his - poring over papers and records and scraps of evidence worth less than a dime. At some point she opens a six pack of beers and they work their way through them as their eyes blur with tiredness and the evidence means less and less and less until they’re draped over the couch together, insensible with exhaustion.

“I think it’s time to call it quits,” she says wryly, downing the rest of her beer.

He’s about to concur, eyes burning with the effort it takes to stay awake, when his eyes catch on one of the papers laid out on the floor. He steps closer, grabbing it and holding it up as if to test it in the light. “This is it,” he says, half to himself.

Joyce is suddenly right behind him, pressed against his shoulder, and he has to force his concentration to stay on the file. “What is it?” she asks, her voice humming through his shirt. He has to repress a shiver.

“It’s- it’s evidence. So, we know that Brenner took Kali, right, only she never came forward. We’ve got proof, we’ve got an eyewitness account, okay. But we didn’t have anything to link it to Jane’s kidnapping. Not until now.”

She quirks an eyebrow, taking the paper and inspecting it closely. Tiredness forgotten, and so is his. He feels the adrenaline thrumming through his veins, and it’s not just the excitement of the case.

“But that-”

“The adoption agency,” Joyce finishes for him. She looks up, and her eyes are alive with excitement. “Terry Ives was going to put her up for adoption through this agency- Hawkins Adoption. Only she pulled out, right? But Priya Prasad didn’t pull out. Kali’s mom.”

“They were both part of the same adoption agency, at least for a time. That’s a solid connection. That’s a wholeass lead, Joyce. We’re getting somewhere. The subpoena for the work records- it might have worked, sure, but I bet you would’ve had a hard time convincing the jury without a motive. We’re on track for a motive here, I’m sure of it.”

She grins in triumph, and suddenly he becomes aware of quite how close they are. How he can see each fleck of mascara where it’s dropped to her cheeks, and the barely perceptible laughter lines framing her eyes. She smells of smoke, and shampoo, and beer, and everything’s ever so slightly blurry in a faintly tipsy haze. He could kiss her now, if he wanted. He doesn’t believe she’d object.

But then-

“Mom?”

They both turn, leaping apart as if scalded, to see a kid, presumably Joyce’s youngest, watching them from the doorway. He’s clutching an empty glass of water- he probably only wanted to fill it up- but he nearly got an eyeful instead. Jesus.

“Hey, sweetie,” Joyce says, running a hand through her already mussed-up hair. “Can’t sleep?”

He shrugs. “Just wanted some water.” He’s staring at Hopper, eyes a little too incisive for his liking.

Joyce remembers herself. “Oh, yeah, this is Detective Hopper, I’m helping him out on a case. Were we too loud? Did we wake you?” Will shakes his head, but she apologises anyway, and then looks after him a little desperately as he fetches his water and heads back to bed.

When he’s gone, Hopper tries to meet her gaze, but it’s stubbornly trained on the floor. Finally he relents. “I- I should go.”

“Yeah, you should.” He feels a twinge of offended surprise at the harshness of her tone. It’s not like the kid saw anything, hell, it’s not like they even woke him up. But the open excitement in her face is gone. Her expression is flat, defensive. He remembers, suddenly, the first night of their acquaintance. The hissed _yours_ in answer to the question of his place or hers. She doesn’t like people in her family’s space, clearly, which makes it all the more interesting that he was invited in with such ease a couple hours earlier.

He collects up the papers and leaves them in a neat stack for her on the coffee table. When this is done his hands are at a loss, twitching empty by his sides, as she sees him out. “Take a taxi,” she says, as he’s zipping up his coat. “Subway’s dangerous this time of night.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Sure,” he says. They both know he doesn’t mean it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the next time he sees her - and to be fair, it’s only a week later, a week and a half before christmas itself - he’s made an arrest. he brings the guy in and the first thing he does is call joyce. (half because brenner’s already asked for his lawyer, half because he’s missed the sound of her voice.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> shoutout to @joppers whose lovely comment motivated me to finish this chapter lmao sorry it's been so long y'all!
> 
> warning for very very very mild suggestion of general domestic abuse

The next time he sees her - and to be fair, it’s only a week later, a week and a half before Christmas itself - he’s made an arrest. He brings the guy in and the first thing he does is call Joyce. (Half because Brenner’s already asked for his lawyer, half because he’s missed the sound of her voice.)

“Hey, it’s me.” It’s too personal, it just slips out, like they’ve been dating for months instead of working together for weeks, but she breezes right on past, the awkwardness of the last time they saw each other apparently forgotten.

“Hey, you got something?”

“Yeah, I got something. He’s looking at me from the interview room right now.”

There’s a moment of breathless silence. Then another voice - “Counsellor? Can we get back to the case?”

Hopper winces. He’s interrupted her in a meeting. An important one, by the imperious tone. Maybe he should interview Brenner by himself. Maybe he’s just gonna get her in trouble by calling her about this, this case that neither of them should be working.

But then-

“I’ll be there in ten,” she says, and hangs up as the other person in the room begins to splutter. Maybe Hopper misjudged her, he thinks, but then again, he knew she was fiery from the moment he met her. She’s not the type to let her boss get in the way. Neither is he.

She arrives thirteen minutes later, breathless and unwinding her scarf from around her neck. He deliberately has to look away, his gaze on her white throat a little too desperate for his liking. He’s never known a woman like her, really. Diane came close but she was prim and proper and didn’t drink beer. She made him kill spiders for her, and he’s pretty damn sure Joyce can kill her own spiders.

“You got him?” she says, when she’s hung up her coat. She looks more buttoned-up today. A checked dress with a high collar, hair in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. That meeting must have been real important, he thinks.

“Yeah.” He shows her into the observation room, indicates Brenner leaning obnoxiously back on his chair through the two-way mirror. “He’s a slippery bastard, though. Won’t talk until his lawyer gets here, and all the evidence we’ve got doesn’t mean much without a confession.”

She bites her lip, stares through the glass for a moment - then looks back up at him. “So? Do you think he’s guilty?”

He raises an eyebrow. Is that even a question? “Without a doubt.” The sneer in the man’s face is proof enough for him. Not so much for a jury, though. They don’t accept gut feeling in Discovery.

She nods, her massive eyes sharp. “Leave him to me.”

He follows her into the interview room, a little helpless, a little in awe. He sits down beside her and switches on the tape recorder, and then just sits back. Sits back and watches Joyce Horowitz, Assistant District Attorney, in her element.

The clock ticks on the wall. Brenner’s lawyer shifts in his chair. Brenner is calm and still beside him. Joyce says nothing for a long, silent minute, just surveys his face with icy control. Finally-

“Why?”

“Why what?” Brenner replies, smoothly as ever. His lawyer casts him a warning look.

“The girls. Jane and Kali. We know you took them. You did a pretty terrible job at covering your tracks, I gotta say. They identified you easily enough.”

He says nothing.

“The question is - why?” Joyce leans forward, placing her hands on the table. “What’s the sick agenda going on in your twisted little mind?”

He just sneers at her. “You haven’t got anything on me. If you did, you wouldn’t be here, would you? Joyce Horowitz, ADA. Don’t you have better things to be doing?”

“Not when you kidnapped two children.”

An almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes. Something about that statement riled him, Hopper sees. Joyce sees it too.

“There are more, aren’t there?”

Brenner sits back, face still calm, but the smirk has dropped. “I don’t have to talk to you. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

His lawyer takes the opportunity to leap in. “My client is correct. You have - to use the legal term - _fuck all._ So, if you don’t mind, we’ll be leaving now.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Joyce eyes them coolly across the table. She’s the picture of confidence - at least on the surface. But Hopper, in the few short weeks he’s known her, has dug deep enough to notice the way her jaw has tightened, the way her knuckles have whitened as she clasps her hands together.

“Wouldn’t you?” Brenner is unfazed. The two begin a staring contest so fraught Hopper’s half afraid one of them will keel over in the middle of it, so he lays a hand on her arm. It’s enough to make her look at him, and read the silent message in his eyes. _Come on._

She follows him out and now her eyes are burning with anger, lip curled in righteous passion. “Please tell me you’ve got some miracle-worker over at CSU who can nail this guy.”

He sighed. “I told you, it was enough to arrest him but to get him in court? You’re the expert but I’m not optimistic.”

She leaned back against the desk, watching Brenner through the two-way mirror. Her fingers drum on it incessantly, shoulders tense. Not for the first time he reflects that this - this isn’t just a case for her. Or for him. For either of them. For him it’s some sort of twisted proof - proof that he’s not done, he’s not washed up, he can still save people, not just screw them up. For her-

It’s probably her boys. Will, the same age as Jane. Single mom, shitty ex, kids the light of her life. It makes sense.

“Hey, why don’t we-” Her gaze is still fixed on Brenner, so tentatively he places a hand on her arm. He’s relieved when she doesn’t pull away. “Why don’t we get some lunch, cool off a bit, huh? Think about how we can play this?”

She turns to him, finally, and there’s an adorable crease between her furrowed brows. “Yeah, okay, but can’t you only hold him for twenty-four-”

“-hours, yeah, but we’ve got twenty-three still left. Let’s take a break, Joyce.”

She sighs and he feels her relax - then he realises he’s still holding her arm, and he hastens to let go. He doesn’t really understand it, any of it - why it feels so natural or why it feels so scary. He’d rather not complicate it now. Not with Brenner leering in the other room.

He leads her outside, tries to hurry her through the station before any of his colleagues or god forbid his boss notice her. But luck’s not on his side, because-

“Jim!” comes Owens’ jovial voice as he hurries over to intercept them. “You got anything on that fake armoire yet?” Hopper groans, as his boss’s gaze moves from him to Joyce and then sparks with what could be recognition. “Joyce, hey, how are you? Long time no see.”

Joyce bites her lip, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah, I’m okay.” With an effort- “How- how are you?”

“Oh, I’m doing okay. Working antiques fraud now, with Jim here of course. How do you know each other?”

“Uh- we-” Hopper flounders, and looks to Joyce for support, but she’s mute, staring at the floor. “Just a bit of legal advice. Nothing major.”

Owens frowns, but Joyce has found her voice. “Yeah, we’re pretty much done. Just heading off for lunch. It- it was nice seeing you, Sam.”

She hurries off before either of them can blink and Hopper is left helplessly to follow after her. It gets him out of explaining the neglected fake armoire, at least. He hasn’t looked at that case in at least a week.

He finds her in a tiny diner with sticky brown formica tables, already hunched over a gritty black coffee. Her hands fidget over the tabletop and she barely looks at him as he sits down. “So-” he starts, then stops. This a new side of her, one he hasn’t really encountered before. She’s been cold, closed-off before, but never this anxious.

“So,” she repeats, and risks a glance up at him, eyes shy. “About Sam-”

“Sam,” he says, despite himself. Why is he _Sam_ to her? He can’t help but think - horribly, jealously - that it’s a lover’s kind of intimacy. One she’s never bestowed on him. He’s _Hop_ to her, forever and always. And he likes it, but-

“Yes, Sam. I didn’t know he worked with you. I thought he was still in Special Victims.”

_Special Victims._ He stiffens.

She takes a deep breath and swipes a finger around the rim of her coffee cup - round, and round, and round. Once again he has to fight the urge to take her hand, still her movements, calm her nerves. She’s never like this, he thinks, but then again, he doesn’t really know her at all. “I joked about my ex, didn’t I? I told you he was an ass, which is true. But- well- let’s say he was enough of an ass that SVU got involved.”

His fists clench, almost unconsciously.

“Sam worked my case. Helped me get the divorce, when it came to it. Then we fell out of touch.”

It sheds some light, sure it does. He understands her a little more - but only a little. It won’t explain why she pulled away quite so violently the other night, when her son saw nothing but eye contact. But these are small steps. He’s willing to wait.

He doesn’t expect her to continue, but she does. “It was- well, it was weird, at work. My colleague prosecuted my case and then acted like I owed him something- while all the rest just felt sorry for me-” She swallowed, and he stopped fighting the urge. He reached over and took her hands in his, and to his permanent surprise she let him. Her skin was soft and warm. “That’s why I took my- well, sabbatical. My son was sick, but that wasn’t the whole reason. I couldn’t face it all, not for a while.”

“That’s okay, Joyce,” he feels compelled to say.

She smiles a little ruefully, a little bitterly. “Is it? I worked retail for a few years, actually.” She brings a finger to her lips. “Shh, don’t tell anyone. Pretty sure I’d be fired.”

He smirks. “It’s all character-building, right? I did my fair share of bartending back in the day.”

“Yeah, but you weren’t paying your way through Harvard at the time.” She meets his gaze, eyes wide and dark and earnest. “You don’t know what it’s like, Hop. I’m not like the rest of them. I’m not- Ninety-nine percent of the people I work with are college-fund kids. I had to take three years out after high school working nine to five and overtime just to afford tuition.”

He sits back in his chair, but he doesn’t let go of her hands. This is changing everything, everything he’d ever thought about her, but at the same time-

At the same time it’s confirming what he already knew.

That she’s not like the rest, and she’s not some privileged white-collar ice queen. She’s fought, and she’s struggled, and she needs comforting sometimes just like him. Maybe she’s not so untouchable. Maybe it’s something more than aloofness that caused her to draw away from him that night.

“Going back to retail felt like- I don’t know. Like I was regressing. It just made everything feel worse, so coming back now-” She squeezes his hand, but her face doesn’t change. Maybe she doesn’t even realise she’s done it. “I need to win this case, Hop. I need to feel like I’m making progress again.”

He doesn’t break eye contact. It feels sacred, sanctified, despite the roar of traffic outside, despite the buzz of people in the diner around them. At this table, over her coffee, it’s just them. “We’re gonna do it, Joyce. We’re gonna charge him, and then we’re gonna convict him, and we’re gonna put him away.”

Her smile is heartbreakingly intimate. “Okay, Hop. Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think xx


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “you want me to come with you?” he tries not to let it sound too surprised. she’s studying the shitty office carpet and he hates this, that she feels like she can’t ask. that she feels like he might say no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it's been a while, but here it is!! the next chapter!! enjoy. warnings for more implied domestic violence in this chapter.

A basement. Jane’s terrified face. Hawkins Adoption. Brenner’s cold, piercing glare. Words and images swirl around him until they stop making sense at all, and he stares glumly across the scattered papers on his desk.

“We’re getting nowhere,” Joyce says. She stands up from her position surrounded by documents on the floor with a groan and stretches. A lock of hair is coming loose from her bun, ruining her polished exterior. She’s jittery, tense. She crosses to his desk and leans over it, eyes locking with his. “As of now, we got nothing.”

“Come on, Joyce, it’s only-“ he checks his watch and frowns “-ten pm. Fuck, it’s ten pm.”

“See?” She flaps a hand up, widens her eyes at him. “We need a new angle.”

“What angle? I’m all ears.”

She just looks at him helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

He stands up too, begins to tidy away his papers. “We still have fifteen hours. Let’s take a-“

Her phone rings. She scrambles to answer it, presses it to her ear as he coughs and looks away. “Jonathan - what is it? Are you okay?”

A moment of silence.

“_What?_” His eyes are drawn rapidly back at her panicked exclamation. “Are you sure it’s not just-“ He sees her swallow as her son responds, throat dipping, lips pinched. “Alright, I’m coming home. If he phones again- I swear to God-“

After another fraught moment she hangs up and turns to stare at Hopper with more distress in her eyes than he’s ever seen on her face before. “I- I have to go.”

“Joyce-“ he starts, but she’s already slinging her scarf around her neck, slipping her coat on, stuffing her papers into her bag. 

“I’ll call you, okay?” She looks at him for one still second before hurrying off, leaving him staring after her, clueless. It’s gotta be something urgent, he knows that. This case means too much to her for her to just walk away, not unless it’s something important. And he can’t blame her. Family is paramount - not that he’d know, not anymore.

He looks around the empty office. His coworkers’ desks, all dark, all vacant. Antiques fraud doesn’t tend to inspire the kind of passion that makes one stay late. Lucky, really, because what he and Joyce are (were?) working on has to stay private for as long as possible. Maybe when they’ve got a confession they can broadcast it to the world - but they haven’t. Not yet.

He sighs, returns to his desk. He may as well continue. Going home to his empty apartment, his empty fridge, his empty bed - it doesn’t sound all that appealing. A break sounded much nicer when he had someone to share it with.

His eyes land on Jane’s statement. If they could just locate this basement-

But then his thoughts are interrupted by hurried, frantic footsteps. He looks up and it’s Joyce, returning already, back so soon. “Joyce?” he starts, straightening up.

Her face is serious, jaw clenched. eyes wide and urgent. “Could you-” she bites her lip. Her fingers fidget with the strap of her bag and this hesitation isn’t flirtatious, not one bit. It makes him put down his pen. Get to his feet, round the desk, meet her gaze. She looks up at him and he sees her eyes are glassy. “It was Lonnie,” she said, quietly. “He phoned the apartment and I- I’m worried he’s gonna turn up. I’d rather-” She drags the words out of herself like they’re physically paining her. “I’d rather someone else was there.”

“You want me to come with you?” He tries not to let it sound too surprised. She’s studying the shitty office carpet and he hates this, that she feels like she can’t ask. That she feels like he might say no. “Yeah, of course. Hang on, let me pack up all the files.”

She looks up at that. He hears her exhale - relief, a release of tension? - but he’s already turned back to his desk, shoving papers into their folders and then rounding it to slide them into the filing cabinet. He shrugs his coat on and then that’s that - Brenner has a long night in the holding cells ahead of him and they’ll have to think of something else, but that’s okay. Hopper’s not gonna hold it against her, not at all, though maybe she thinks he will. Her eyes are still wary when he turns to her.

Outside he hails them a taxi and they spend the ride in fraught silence. Joyce is a rigid frame of nerves, the constant fidgeting of her hands her only movement. Hopper stares alternately at her and out the window at the darkened streets, wondering what the hell he can do to help her other than this. 

The taxi driver watches them with interest in the rearview mirror. Hopper’s often wondered what taxi drivers are thinking. What does he think of him and Joyce? Estranged lovers, perhaps. Grieving parents of a missing child, grown apart as a result. Or coworkers, struggling with a case, and abundant sexual tension besides. (Is that wishful thinking?)

Soon enough her apartment building looms ahead and Hopper has to resist the urge to intercede as Joyce hands the driver a few bills to pay. He knows she wouldn’t appreciate it, not at all. And her salary is probably far greater than his, even as a public attorney. 

And then they’re going up in the elevator and she looks across at him, just once, but it’s enough for him to catch her gaze and hold it. She’s biting her lip, wringing her hands, and on (an almost certainly stupid) impulse he reaches out and takes them in his. 

Her skin is warm and soft. She gives his hands an almost imperceptible squeeze, looking up at him with some of the old fire he’s grown accustomed to. “Arrest him,” she says, softly. Out of the corner of his eye he can see the slow tick of the floors going up. They don’t have much time. “If he’s here. Please.”

“You sure?” He knows what that will mean for her. He knows that will mean digging up the grave of her past, rehashing everything she took years out to heal.

She looks at him firmly. “Yes,” she says, and kisses him lightly. He stares at her, dumbstruck, as the elevator doors swing open. Her floor. She bites her lip again and turns away, visibly squaring her shoulders. He doesn’t dare to take her hand again. He has the feeling she’d just shrug him off.

(If it were anyone else- absolutely anyone- someone with less gravitas, less history, less spark- he’d be annoyed at the whole hot-and-cold routine. He’d ask her where they stood, and then he’d either walk away or take her to bed again. But it’s Joyce, and there’s both a fragile balance with her that he just can’t bring himself to topple and an unbearable attraction that says he doesn’t have to.)

He doesn’t get his gun out as she unlocks the door, although he’s dying to. He lets her go first but he remains tense, vigilant by her side. If Lonnie is in there- well. He doesn’t know everything that went down but he knows enough to know he’ll want to beat the shit out of the guy on sight, so maybe it’s better he holds back.

But the only sound is hurried teenaged footsteps and the gasp of “Mom!” as Joyce’s youngest races into her arms. She holds Will tight, her own composure melting as he cries into her shoulder. Another boy appears around the corner, too, presumably her eldest. He regards Hopper with suspicion and all but ignores him when he speaks.

“He called again, but he hasn’t turned up. I locked the door, like you said.”

Joyce releases Will and moves to embrace the other kid - Jonathan, Hopper recalls - with all too much relief in her posture. “Okay, that- that’s good. Thank you. And- I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I should have been here.”

Jonathan says something inaudible and suddenly Hopper feels sharply, painfully out of place. He can’t remember the last time he was in a family home, witnessed a family interaction that wasn’t wholly dysfunctional. Maybe not since it was his own family, and doesn’t that hurt. He swallows a sudden lump in his throat, and realises Jonathan’s eyes have turned back to him.

“Who’s that?”

“Oh, he’s- he’s a friend, from work. We’re working on something together, I- uh, I brought him just in case.” Joyce tucks a loose curl of hair behind her ear and clears her throat, and whatever that means it’s certainly not that they’re _coworkers_. For someone so composed in court she’s strangely easy to read outside of it.

“A friend, huh?” Jonathan’s clearly had the same thought. But he doesn’t press it, for which Hopper is grateful. Instead he turns back to his mom. “I blocked Lonnie’s number after the second call, but he’ll probably try again. I know you don’t wanna get the police involved, but…”

“If it happens again,” she promises, her eyes on Hopper’s. “He’s not getting away with this.”

Jonathan glances back at Hopper. He looks like his mom, just as Will does, but his face is more closed off, more shuttered. This is a kid who’s seen some shit, Hopper realises, and tries not to think about what exactly that means. “Alright,” Jonathan says, softly. “And - I mean, if it’s still okay - don’t forget Nancy’s meant to be shadowing you tomorrow.”

“I haven’t,” Joyce says, though by the look of her face she had. “So she’s coming here in the morning?”

Jonathan nods, kisses her on the cheek, and bids her goodnight. Will does the same, and then it’s just Hopper and Joyce, alone in the front room of her apartment again. The kiss in the elevator, previously banished to the back of his mind, is now burning on his lips. He’d rather like to finish what she started, but this isn’t the right time. He knows this. He also knows he’s wondering when the hell the right time’s gonna be, because it always seems wrong. (Brenner doesn’t cross his mind at all.)

“Thank you,” she says softly, startling him out of his thoughts. He realises he was staring at her lips, and he drags his gaze back up to her eyes.

“Yeah, uh, sure.” His voice is rougher than normal.

“I know it was a false alarm, I dragged you out all this way…” She looks away. Is she ever gonna stop biting those oh-so-kissable lips?

“Stop.” He steps closer, almost without meaning to. “I mean it. I don’t mind. I want you to feel safe. I can’t imagine what it’s like- not feeling safe in your own apartment- with kids, especially-”

“It’s only recently.” She sighs, runs a hand through her hair. More of it falls out of its careful updo and finally (finally!) she makes the inevitable decision to tug it all out. It falls around her shoulders in a dark, wavy cloud. He resists the urge to reach out and curl a strand around his finger. “Ever since he got out of prison - _good behaviour_, apparently, though I’ve been told the parole board is often unfairly lenient - he’s been calling. Only once a month, mainly, but this…” 

“I can arrest him if you need me to, Joyce. Or someone else can. You shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

“Yeah, but-” Her voice is full of frustration. “Then I’m back to square one, aren’t I? We all are. I worked so hard- _so hard_\- to get rid of him. To erase him from my life. If I start this again- it won’t ever end. Yeah, if he does something drastic, then it’ll be my only option. I don’t mind that. If it means keeping my boys safe... But other than that-”

“Jesus,” he says, softly. She looks up at him with startled eyes, almost offended, but she shouldn’t be. He’s in awe. “I can’t believe you went through all this and you’re still so-” He swallows. “Strong. Badass.”

“Badass?” Unexpectedly, a smirk comes onto her face. “You think so?”

“Yeah.” His solemnity doesn’t waver; neither does his gaze. “Yeah, I do.”

She kisses him again.

This time he kisses her back. His hands find her long, tangled hair. Hers bracket his neck and tug him closer like she can’t ever get enough. It’s like it was the first time - rough, and hot, and dirty, but there’s something different in it too. Some element of understanding. Because while she might not know the ins and outs of Sara, Diane, his removal from Homicide (and he’ll have to tell her one day, he knows this much, if only to return the favor), he knows her dark, twisted past. He knows what makes her hands shake. He knows what will make her gasp, too, because it’s true what they say. You have far better sex with people you’ve known longer than a day.

And that’s what they do.

They back each other into her bedroom. She closes the door, fumbles to lock it with one hand as the other tugs at the buttons on his shirt. His lips find her neck and he can feel her restraining a moan - because of course, they have to be quiet. Doesn’t mean he won’t take great pleasure in testing her formidable attorney’s restraint.

After, they stare at the ceiling and she whispers, “We really should stop doing this. We’re working a case together.”

“Not officially,” he smirks, turning his head to look at her. Her hair is sprawled out on the pillow between them, her collarbones shining with sweat. “And- well. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you think!! i'm gonna try to work on the next chapter in the next few days but my new uni term starts this week so i might not have time. if you don't hear from me in a while, i promise i'll be back eventually lol
> 
> xx


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there’s a glint in her eye that wasn’t there before and - though he hardly dares to hope - he knows, he just _knows_, that she’s got something. something.

He wakes to semi-darkness, a ridge of sunlight lancing through the gap in the curtains and cutting across the sheets. _Shit, it must be late_, he thinks, because it’s New York and it’s December and it’s never sunny early. He rolls over and groans a little, checks his watch.

“What time is it?” Joyce’s voice is quiet, sleepy. He glances over at her and is surprised - in some distant, awake corner of his brain - that she’s wearing a loose white shirt which she was most definitely not wearing when they fell into bed together. She must have gotten up in the night, the awake part of him thinks, as the part that’s still asleep struggles to answer her question.

“Uh… It’s nine thirty. Nine thirty. _Shit._” He throws the covers off and scrambles to find his clothes. As he’s buttoning up his shirt he takes the opportunity to watch her - sliding off her sweatpants, slipping into underwear and pantyhose and a black dress that clings to every one of her curves. A twitch of the mascara wand, a quick daub of foundation, and a hurried movement of hands that pulls her hair into a loose knot at the nape of her neck.

“Alright,” she says, as she slides her heels on, “we should be okay. I mean, Jonathan and Will are at school, so. The apartment’s empty. Yes, we’re gonna be late for work…”

She avoids looking at him as she says all this. She definitely doesn’t want him cozying up with her kids, he knows that much, but also it’s more than that. It occurs to him that she never meant him to stay over, and then it occurs to him that she was awake in the small hours - judging by the change of clothes - so she could easily have kicked him out then.

He doesn’t understand her, really he doesn’t. He keeps thinking that maybe he’s close but then again everything shifts, like living life on a seesaw. He’d like to say he knows where they stand, but he doesn’t. Not at all.

He leads the way out to the kitchen, already daydreaming about his morning coffee. He hopes Joyce has one of those fancy espresso machines, or at least that they’ll have time to stop on their way to the station. But what greets him, instead of the shining beauty of a functioning Nespresso, is a teenage girl.

She stares at him. He’s not sure whose face is more stricken - his, or hers. When Joyce emerges behind him she stops stock still. “Nancy,” she says, and then quieter, “shit. Nancy. I forgot.”

Nancy. Right. The girl who’s meant to be shadowing her today.

“Hey, Joyce,” Nancy says, with the ease of someone who’s been here countless times and has met Joyce countless more. Definitely Jonathan’s girlfriend. “Um…”

“God, sorry, Nancy, we- I- um, overslept.” Joyce is studiously not looking at him and he resists the urge to laugh. The whole thing is hilariously funny, really, at least from this angle.

Nancy raises an eyebrow. Her demeanour is almost bossy - and she’s certainly dressed the part. Curly hair neatly tied back, white shirt tucked into a grey pinstriped pantsuit. Dressed for a day in court, not at the station. He wonders with a little trepidation if it will blow the whole operation for her to accompany them today. “Who- um, who’s this?” she says, when it becomes clear that Joyce isn’t going to introduce him.

“This is- uh- a friend. Coworker. We’re working together on a case.” The ensuing silence is thick and acutely uncomfortable. Hopper is still resisting the urge to laugh.

“Hopper. Detective Hopper.”

Nancy seems satisfied. “Nancy Wheeler. Do you want some coffee? I made some, I hope you don’t mind-”

Hopper’s about to accept but Joyce cuts across him. “Oh, we have to get going. Thanks, though, and it’s fine. You know you’re welcome here whenever you’d like.” Her smile is wide and honest, containing not a trace of her earlier discomfort. She’s at her happiest, he thinks, when she’s looking after people - which is what makes her chosen career as a prosecutor such an interesting one.

“Where are we going?” Nancy asks, as they’re all grabbing their coats.

“Station,” Hopper answers, as Joyce goes to collect the scattered papers from the coffee table that she’d clearly laid out sometime during the night. When she returns there’s a glint in her eye that wasn’t there before and - though he hardly dares to hope - he knows, he just _knows_, that she’s got something. Something.

And in the taxi she confirms it. “So last night - well, this morning, really - I woke up and I had this thought about the case. We’ve pulled all the CCTV from Brenner’s building, right, and there’s no sign of Jane, or Kali back when she said he took her. And we checked relatives’ properties and his business too - but there’s somewhere we didn’t check.”

She looks at him triumphantly, like she’s deliberately stretching the suspense. Nancy leans in and subconsciously he finds himself doing the same.

“His business used to be in a different premises. And we checked that on the date of Kali’s abduction, but we never stopped to check it now.”

“But they sold it,” he finds himself arguing.

“They sold it, yes. But we never checked who they sold it to.” She takes out a paper from her bag. “My IT guy, Alexei, faxed this to me.”

He raises his eyebrows. Fax? In this day and age? And an IT guy who never sleeps? She gets more interesting by the minute. But then he looks at it, and his eyes widen. It’s a copy of the contract. Signed by Brenner in all the right places as vendor, of course, but the purchaser is-

“Hawkins Adoption.” Joyce’s voice is alive with thrill. “I bet you anything you like if we watch the current CCTV of that place, we’ll get something.”

“I’m not gonna take that bet,” he murmurs, moving his eyes from the paper to her face, flushed with triumph, “because I know you’re right.”

\--

T-minus two hours before they have to release Brenner, or charge him. They don’t have enough for the latter, not yet. But they’re working on it.

“Anything?” Nancy asks, as she sets a fresh coffee down on Hopper’s desk. He barely glances at it, gaze focused solely on the TV screen in front of him. Hours and hours and hours, angles upon angles upon angles. It would take weeks to go through it all, and he has less than two hours.

Nancy’s been looking too, but Joyce is only half paying attention. She’s borrowing the desk opposite, scribbling furious notes on a file he knows he’ll only half understand. She’s due in court this afternoon - unfortunately, unluckily, catastrophically - so it’s just up to him. Him, and Nancy, who’s not even an intern.

“Thanks,” he says, finally, as the tape finishes and he takes a large slurp of his coffee, which he quickly regrets as it scalds the roof of his mouth. “And- well- no. Not yet, anyway.” He risks a glance at Joyce but she’s clearly not listening. She must have written reams and reams by now. Thank god he’s not a lawyer, he thinks. He never was a very good essayist in high school.

Onto the next tape. The view around the back of the building, partially obscured by the high chain link fence directly in front of the camera. Perfect for hiding nefarious crimes - and requiring a ridiculous amount of concentration. He’s beginning to regret his and Joyce’s late night - only, as he looks around at her again, appreciates the lock of hair springing out of its knot, the elegant curve of her neck as she bends her head over the desk, the slim line of her waist in profile, he reflects that he is very much _not_.

“What was that?”

He whips back around at Nancy’s sharp voice. He grabs for the remote and rewinds the tape, looking closely. And sure enough - it’s him. Brenner. Carrying Jane, limp like a corpse in his arms. He passes in and out of view, but it’s enough to know that it’s him. It’s unmistakeable - or at least, unmistakable to someone who’s spent many, many hours sitting across from him in an interrogation room. The white hair, the sneering profile. It’s him. Maybe he thought the obstruction on the CCTV would be enough, maybe he thought the shell company would be enough - but it’s not.

“You found something?”

Joyce is looking at him from her desk, her chin resting on her hand, her pen still poised in her fingers. She’s looking with interest at the screen.

“Maybe,” he says, because he doesn’t want to be wrong, even though he knows he’s not. He doesn’t want to ruin her day in court - her real job, not the job that involves chasing after his wild leads - just in case.

But Nancy overrules him. “Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know all that much about law yet, but- well. It’s him. Your suspect.”

Joyce drops her pen and it rolls across the desk, hitting the carpet soundlessly, but she doesn’t bend to pick it up. She stands and joins him by the screen, eyes fierce, sharp, concentrated as he rewinds it for her to see.

After it’s done and he’s disappeared from view she nods. “Yeah. Yeah, Hop, we-” Her confident voice breaks and raw emotion bleeds through it. “We got him.”

The bustling office, Nancy, his coworkers, his boss in his office aside, Hopper would really, _really_ like to kiss her right about now. And by the way she’s unconsciously inched towards him, she’d like to do the same. It’s not the time, though - and it’s actually not the time, not like the half-truth he told himself last night. He settles for reflecting on what an excellent fucking detective she’d make, if only she weren’t so smart. She deserves better than the smelly precinct with donut crumbs trodden into the carpet and swivel chairs with broken wheels. She deserves courtrooms, not coffee stains. Late nights are part of the job whatever you do.

But then he thinks - _wait_. Wait. Because this is concrete, sure, but juries tend to like a _why._

Nancy’s smile has dropped at his own frown and Joyce looks at him for a fractional moment before her own eyes dim with understanding. “You want a motive.” He nods. “Hop-“

“It’s what juries like.”

“It’s what _detectives_ like,” she counters. “Sometimes there just isn’t one. Not one that we can understand, and if we can’t understand it we can’t expect a jury to. You know what my professor said to my class, the first day of law school?” She steps closer. “He said _treat the jury like they’re idiots. Ninety-nine percent of the time that’s what they are_.”

“But-“ He swallows. How can he make her understand. They need to know - he has to know. “We owe it to Jane and to Kali, Joyce. They deserve to know why he did this to them. Why he took them out of their lives and locked them in basements for a week, and left them to die. And Jane’s mom-“ He breaks off. “Wouldn’t you want to know?”

And this is dangerously, perilously close to where he was three years ago, to the reason he got reassigned in the first place. He can see that Joyce has sensed this. Her eyes widen, her lips pinch together. She looks like she might yell at him, but then she just nods. “Yeah,” she says, evenly. “Yeah, I would.” She’s looking at him with something deeper behind her words, but she says nothing more.

He exhales, feels the sudden tension fall from his shoulders. “Okay, well, we’ve still got just under two hours. That’s enough for us to investigate those offices, come back here, and charge him. Then we can ask the asshole why he did all this.”

She nods, tightly. “Nancy, um- I’m sorry, this isn’t turning out to be a great day for you, but you can read over my notes for court this afternoon if you want and I’ll take you there with me later.” Nancy coming with them is out of the question. If it were up to him Joyce wouldn’t come either, just in case. Who knows what they’re walking into. But he’s known her long enough by now to know that she won’t take no for an answer, not on this.

As they’re walking out Owens approaches and this time he notices, really notices, the way her spine tenses. Even the very sight of him a reminder. “Oh, hey, Joyce. Where are you both off to?”

It doesn’t sound overbearing - and it shouldn’t, since in some ways Joyce is his boss - but it feels it anyway. Hopper opens his mouth but she beats him to it. “Hopper’s helping me out with some legwork for my case this afternoon.”

Owens raises an eyebrow. “That’s good of him.” Is that respect in his eyes as he turns to Hopper? Well done, Jim, looking after the damaged counsellor. Owens passing on the baton. Alternately it’s Hopper who’s the damaged one, Joyce the babysitter. He clenches his teeth.

“He’s gonna find out you’re lying,” he says to her, as they step out into the blustery snow. She turns to him with a loose strand of hair whipping about her face.

“Sure he is,” she says. “But by then I’ll be prepping for Brenner’s prosecution and all they’ll do is give us a pat on the back.”

“We ask for forgiveness, not permission?”

She smirks at him. “Exactly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know! another chapter? so soon? who is this?? don't expect it to last haha but enjoy it while you can.
> 
> let me know what you think!! xx


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> maybe this was a bad idea. joyce is a civilian, afterall. ADAs aren’t magically invulnerable. but there’s no stopping her, not now, and he has to follow her or else she’s sure to get hurt. he’s not sure if it’s foolhardy or admirable. he’d very much like it to be the latter.

The offices. They’re just as they looked on the tape: gray, dull, cold. Hopper looks up at them suspiciously and Joyce fidgets by his side - anxious or eager, he can’t tell.

“What are you waiting for?” she asks finally, voice waspish, and okay. She’s eager. It’s better than anxious but still, something doesn’t feel right. He’s not putting her in danger, no way, and if she gets annoyed with him in the process so be it. But after a few minutes of surveying it, spotting no movements in the empty windows, he has to succumb. 

“Okay,” he says, but holds an arm in front of her when she moves forward. She looks up at him, eyebrows lowered in anger. “But I’m going first. I’m the one with the gun, remember?” He touches it by his side, though he knows she can’t see it under his coat. It’s more for his own reassurance than hers. He wants to know he can keep them both safe - because this Brenner guy is giving him the creeps, even if they’ve got him in custody right now. Who knows what connections he has. Who knows what influences-

Maybe this was a bad idea. Joyce is a civilian, afterall. ADAs aren’t magically invulnerable. But there’s no stopping her, not now, and he has to follow her or else she’s sure to get hurt. He’s not sure if it’s foolhardy or admirable. He’d very much like it to be the latter.

Inside the office building is sparse, empty. He’d been worried about getting in but there’s a whole panel of glass missing in the entrance, leaving a perfectly human-sized hole. There’s graffiti on the wall above the reception desk and it doesn’t exactly look like the evil lair of a criminal mastermind but there has to be more here. He’s sure of it.

He shares a glance with Joyce before they advance deeper into the building, each footstep echoing painfully in the silence. Outside there’s the sudden ring of a siren and they both jump at least a foot in the air - but then she’s pointing to a doorway off to the side, one that the white paintwork is doing absolutely no favors.

“Blood,” she whispers, and she’s right. A faint red stain, stark and bright on the pale wall. She looks up at him with wide eyes. “We should call CSU in here.”

“Yeah, but not yet.” He’s not sure why he’s quite so desperate to see this through, but he is. “I’m gonna go down there. Wait here.”

Predictably, she ignores him. He feels her presence behind him the whole way down the stairs, but he can’t bring himself to tell her to leave. She’s just as invested as he is - and whose fault is that, really?

Downstairs it’s quite different. They’re faced with a long, dark corridor, empty and dingy, and when he shines his phone flashlight down it he finds just a door right at the end. This, he thinks, is more like the site of something criminal. 

Cautiously he leads them closer. Brings out his gun. Joyce’s heels clack on the floor, too loud in the silence. He reaches out for the handle- shares a brief glance with her- full of trepidation-

And then the door flies open before he can even touch it. A man storms out, no more than just a blur- barrels past Hopper, leaving him frozen, speechless- shoves Joyce into the wall and she falls. She falls and that’s enough to spur him into action, surging forward, ready to pick her up, but she looks at him and hisses, voiced pained, “Go after him!”

So he does. He holds his gun ahead of him and rushes back up the stairs, wheels around the corner to the entrance and then he’s faced with the alleyway, already empty. He runs down it, already out of breath - you don’t tend to get criminals who run in antiques fraud - but when he reaches the bustling noise of the street there’s no sign of him. _Fuck._ “Fuck!” he lets out, and gets a few alarmed glances from passers-by. But he thinks he’s entitled to his anger - mainly anger at himself, because that right there was a lead that’s just gone down the fucking toilet.

He hurries back to the offices, down the stairs, to find Joyce pulling herself to her feet, leaning against the wall. Her hair has come out of its updo and there’s blood on her face. 

“Joyce,” he says, moving towards her, arms outstretched but afraid to touch. Is it his place to, he wonders? Will she shrug him off?

“I’m fine,” she says, preemptively. “He just hit me at the wrong angle, I landed badly against the wall-”

The words trip off her tongue, well-worn excuses, and he doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that at _all._ “Joyce, you might be concussed-”

“I’m not concussed,” she says, but then she sways and he has no option but to touch her. To catch her, and hold her up, even as she shrugs him off twenty seconds later. “I just need to- sit down- for a bit-”

He guides her to sit on the dusty bottom step and then, ignoring her protests, gets out his radio and calls for backup.

Later, when she’s had medical attention and been declared “Fine, just a bit shaken,” she looks at him sideways with a rueful expression. 

“So much for not getting caught,” she says. He can’t find the joke in it. They’re sitting on the bench outside the DA’s office like naughty schoolchildren, awaiting the judgement of a cruel headmaster - only worse, because no one goes head to head with the DA and survives to tell the tale. Besides, there’s still a angry cut marring her hairline and there’s still a speck of blood on her chin that the paramedic neglected to clean away. Without even thinking he licks his thumb and wipes at the spot gently, until her chin is as clean and unblemished as before. “Thanks,” she says - breathes - and he hadn’t realised until now quite how close her face is to his-

“You can come in now.” Owens looks down at them from the doorway with a weary expression, and out of the corner of his eye Hopper can see Joyce defiantly jut her chin out.

Together they stand and enter the office - which is fucking ridiculous, by the way, complete with mahogany panelling and a goddamn chandelier - and sit down, side by side, in the chairs facing the desk. The DA - Holloway - stares them down, as Owens paces by his side.

“What were you thinking?” Owen explodes, finally. “You put an ADA’s life on the line on some wild goose chase-”

“Wild goose chase?” Hopper splutters, as Joyce retorts that “I’m fine! And I can hear you, by the way!”

Holloway raises a hand and all three of them fall to silence. Owens is one thing, fine. Hopper knows this, knows him. He’s respected within the NYPD but he’s not an elected official, he’s not got _sway._ The DA, by contrast, has bucketloads. When the DA speaks people listen. “What were you doing there?” he asks, quietly. 

Hopper glances at Joyce. Her jaw is set in a harsh line, as are her shoulders - clearly she’s not comfortable or relaxed - but she nods, and tells the story. He lets her. This is her purview, afterall. Telling stories. Persuading. 

When she’s done there’s a moment of silence, and he has to resist the urge to reach for her hand. It won’t exactly help their case, but it might make him feel better - and he’s made his peace with that, that touching her makes him feel better. It’s just one of those things.

Holloway crosses his arms. “And you didn’t think to share your findings with those to whom her case was assigned?”

“They’d closed the case,” Hopper presses. “It was cold. No one was paying it any attention and then all this stuff just- fell into our laps.”

“_Your_ lap.” Owens looks at him hard. “Why did you drag Counsellor Horowitz into it?”

“He didn’t drag me anywhere. He mentioned it offhand and I expressed my interest. It was entirely my own decision.” Legal precision, as always. He looks at her, struggling to conceal how impressed (read: infatuated) he is.

“Be that as it may,” Holloway says, and god don’t all these lawyers sound the same, “neither of you can have been unaware that you were breaking the rules. Whether the case was cold or not-”

“That’s not-”

He holds up a hand, and Hopper feels Joyce bristle beside him. He, too, feels the sting. “With your history, Ms Horowitz, I shouldn’t say I’m surprised. Trying to prove something, is that it? You should know better. Not every man is a model for your abusive husband-”

“Hey!” Hopper shouts, and Holloway looks rankled until Owens touches him on the shoulder: “Don’t you think that was a little out of line?” he says, and Holloway looks eager to protest but not in front of Hopper and Joyce. Maybe Owens has more influence than he realised. 

Joyce has gone rigid beside him. Holloway’s smile is cruel. “And you, Detective Hopper. Dissatisfied with antiques fraud, are we? Looking for something better? Missing the action? you, too, should know better, after what happened with your daughter.”

Out of the corner of his eye he sees Joyce shoot a look at him and he winces. He doesn’t want to explain that one - but he should. He owes it to her. She told him about Lonnie and well- he’s told her nothing. He has his own secrets too.

“Alright, enough.” Joyce rises to her feet, drawing herself up to all of her five feet, two inches of height, but still it feels impressive. “I can convict this guy. We got him in custody, we have enough to charge him, we have-” she checks her watch “-twenty minutes left to charge him. _Let us charge him,_ and I _promise_ you I will thrash him in court.”

Holloway raises his eyebrows and Hopper crosses his fingers behind his back. Owens crosses his arms, inspecting her with an expression that’s almost _proud,_ and Hopper really hopes that this isn’t a bluff and that it’s a gamble that pays off because he really doesn’t fancy getting booted back down to uniform but then-

“Okay. Let’s play it your way. Charge him, convict him, and then maybe I’ll eye you for the next election cycle. I know you’re after DA.” He looks at her hard. “But if not, you’re gonna be stuck by that filing cabinet for the rest of your career.”

Joyce doesn’t flinch. 

Owens swings around to stare at Hopper. “Alright, you’re in on this, but if you put so much as a hair out of line-”

“Got it,” Hopper says. He just wants to get out of here by this point. He wants to look Joyce in the eye and tell her some truths, and more than that- more than that, he wants to charge this asshole. He wants to charge him and convict him and let him rot in prison. He wants to do his _goddamn job._

“Alright, get out of here.” Owens makes a dismissive motion and Holloway nods at them vaguely, his superior air omnipresent. Hopper follows Joyce out, past the reception desk, not stopping until they’re in the adjacent alleyway and she’s got a cigarette between her lips.

“Jesus,” she just says. “I- shit. I really told him I could do this.”

He looks at her and bites his lip. He wants to stay, wants to spill his heart out, wants to let her finish her cigarette, but they’ve finally (finally!) been given permission to charge Brenner and he’s not letting the asshole slip through their fingers. “You can. Joyce, you can. But only if we charge him.”

She looks at him with eyes too weary for her face. “The precinct?”

He nods. The precinct. Once again, they gotta go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyy long time no see!! i've missed this fic. i've been working on my massive, sprawling s4 fic, which will probably be out sometime in the summer. but today i watched about 3 eps of law and order svu and i was inspired, so. also i'm gonna try and work on the next chapter tomorrow when i'm meant to be (fingers crossed!) catching a flight so, hopefully look out for that.
> 
> in the meantime, let me know what you think (and stay safe!)  
xx


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he’s stuck on the fact that oh, this case is basically over for him. she doesn’t just work with him. it’s her turn now, officially, and he’s taking a backseat. he’s going back to antiques fraud and she’s going back to court every afternoon and late nights in the office on her own, referencing fat tomes full of words he wouldn’t understand, weathering sexist comments from the DA because that’s just what you _do _in politics, and the district attorney’s office is nothing if not political.

Charging Brenner isn’t as satisfying as it should be, somehow. Hopper reads him his rights as Joyce looks on through the one-way mirror and when he’s done, when Brenner’s been taken away for his lawyer to prepare for arraignment tomorrow, he sits there for a moment and scrubs a hand over his beard. He doesn’t hear Joyce come in, just feels her hand on his arm. 

“You okay?” she asks, softly. 

Treacherously, he lets his own hand rest on top of hers, just for a moment. His fingers curl under her slender wrist and he can feel her pulse beating under his touch. Rapid but steady, secure. Strong. “Yeah,” he says, finally, and lets go of her hand.

Back in the office she’s all business, that warm, soft moment all but forgotten. “Alright, I need you to work on piecing together every shred of material evidence we’ve got. CSU needs to go over that basement to within an inch of its life and we need to track down whoever was down there. This case has to be _watertight_, understand? We don’t have a motive yet and that’s fine, I can work with that, but I need everything else to be concrete.”

He nods. He understands.

“Now, I have to- I have to get to court-” Some of the force has gone out of her voice. “Nancy-”

Shit, Nancy’s still here. She’s sitting at his desk, making diligent notes as she was two hours previously like nothing’s happened, when in the space of half an hour they’ve found Brenner’s hideout and charged him and gone up against the DA and _won_, somehow, and Nancy’s still just sitting here, waiting to go to court. She looks up. “Yes?”

“Let’s go. We can get lunch on the way- there’s a good sushi place a few blocks away, we can go over the case there-” 

Hopper wants to tell her to calm down, because she’s talking a mile a minute and she’s got time, she’ll do great in court for whatever case this is, but he doesn’t. It’s not his place, first of all (what does he know?) and secondly he’s stuck on the fact that oh, this case is basically over for him. She doesn’t just work with him. It’s her turn now, officially, and he’s taking a backseat. He’s going back to antiques fraud and she’s going back to court every afternoon and late nights in the office on her own, referencing fat tomes full of words he wouldn’t understand, weathering sexist comments from the DA because that’s just what you _do _in politics, and the District Attorney’s Office is nothing if not political. 

“I’ll be back later,” she promises, and then she hovers and for a bizarre moment it’s almost like she wants to kiss him goodbye. But she doesn’t. 

\--

The afternoon is unproductive. Murray arrives from CSU and gives him a big fat _nada:_ “The basement was scrubbed clean. Freshly, too. Right before you arrived. The cleaning materials - bleach and everything - were still there.” 

Well, shit. They need to find whoever cleaned it even more urgently than before, now. He’s there all evening, scanning CCTV tapes brought in by unlucky uniforms pounding the pavement. He tracks the figure as far as the Upper East Side and then he loses them in a crowd outside a Burberry store. He slams his hands on the desk in frustration. 

When he looks up the precinct is almost empty. Most of the desks are dark. And there’s no sign of Joyce, either, even though she said she’d come back later and this _is _later. Court doesn’t go on till ten pm. He resists the thought that something’s happened to her - that she’s bleeding out in an alleyway somewhere, that Brenner’s faceless accomplice is holding her in a new basement - because it’s five hours since court must have ended and he would have heard something, right? No news is good news.

Then comes the almost equally crushing notion that she just… decided not to come, or forgot. It’s not like she owes him anything, not really, quite the opposite. He owes her.

But still.

He scrubs a hand over his face and begins to pack up his things. He’ll have to think up a new angle, a new way of looking at it. In the morning he’ll go to the Burberry store and see if anyone saw anything suspicious, but he’s not holding out much hope. He’s nearly out the door, his date with two beers and his lumpy couch not exactly filling him with joy, when his phone rings. 

His phone rings and he drops his bag to answer it because there’s only one person who’d be calling him at ten pm. “Joyce,” he says, voice filled with all kinds of relief that he can’t even bring himself to feel embarrassed about - not right now, anyway.

“Hey,” she says. She sounds tired. “You find anything?”

“No. Nothing. CCTV led us to the Upper East Side but no further, and the basement was scrubbed clean.” He hears her sigh. “How was court?”

“Bad. The defence filed a motion to dismiss which the judge is actually _considering_, for some reason, because he’s a jackass, based on some precedent from 1908 which is _completely _ridiculous but of course the judge didn’t think so, so I had to spend the whole afternoon in the DA’s law library researching it…”

He lets her voice wash over him, weary and pissed-off, yes, but also soothing for reasons he’s getting tired of pretending aren’t there. When she finishes there’s a silence, and her next words are almost hesitant. “You have any plans tonight?”

His brain short circuits. Hell fucking _no _does he have plans. Any plans he might have had were cancelled the second he heard her voice. But then he hesitates. Because tomorrow morning, nine am, is Brenner’s arraignment. And if she’s been working on her other case all afternoon, then surely she needs this time to prepare- “What about the arraignment?” he manages to get out, slightly hating himself.

He blinks in surprise when her tone is faintly amused. “Hop, it’s an arraignment. I’m as prepared as I can be.”

Huh. He’s never viewed it from this perspective before. Usually he’s sitting there watching in awe, frankly, because the lawyers just volley back and forth with words that have no meaning to him like they were doing it in the womb. Either that or they don’t sleep, and just spend all their time researching and practicing. Turns out it’s a happy medium. “Okay, then, no. I don’t have plans.”

“You- you wanna come over?” She’s gone all quiet, shy. He can picture it, but only just. A flush on her cheeks, head ducking away from him. And then he wants to see it for himself. 

(_Come over. _She’s not even making excuses about it anymore - she wants him in her space. She feels safe around him. That’s big. She feels safe with her _kids _around him, which is something even bigger.)

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I do.”

\--

He meets her at a reasonably classy takeout place a block from her apartment, where she’s waiting in line for chicken chow mein and rice - “Case food,” she calls it when he comes to join her, with a guilty look. “I haven’t eaten since lunch.” 

He smiles at her and orders beef lo mein himself, because he hasn’t eaten since lunch either. Then he looks at her properly. There are dark circles under her eyes and her hair is coming out its updo, but there’s a glow of _something _around her that sends warmth through him. All he wants to do is kiss her.

And then he does, just lightly, casually, like they’re a married couple with difficult jobs meeting at the takeout place to take dinner home with them, relieved at the work day being over and their being together again. 

Then he thinks, apart from the _married couple _part that’s exactly what they’re doing.

She’s looking up at him with a hazy smile on her face, doe eyes wide and happy, and he could look at her forever. God, could he look at her forever. Her hands have latched onto his collar, holding him there, and is this the happiest he’s ever been?

No, but it’s close.

The man in line behind them coughs meaningfully, and they both flush. Hopper steers them forward, but she stays close to him. She stays close to him, and winds her arm around his, and stays that way when they’re walking out with their food in foil tubs in flimsy plastic bags that swing when they move, but all he can focus on is the press of her arm against his, her warmth through his coat. It’s snowing again and the flakes settle in her hair, white among the dark, and before he can stop himself he pulls her even closer and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“Stop it,” she says, but she’s laughing. “We’re gonna slip in the ice, you know.”

“Nah, I’d hold us up.” He’s laughing too. “C’mon, our food’s gonna get cold.”

They make it to her apartment building but the second they’re in the elevator her lips are on his and the bags of takeout land on the floor as she wraps her arms around his neck and tugs him ever closer. His hands find her waist and then move lower, and her feet leave the floor. She’s so light, he notices. He never realised. He can hold her up without an ounce of strain. And good thing too, because the groan she lets out into his mouth when his hands find her ass is divine.

But all too soon the elevator doors ding open, and she disentangles herself from him, a hot flush on her cheeks as she bends to pick up the discarded takeout. “I’m gonna have to convince the super to delete that footage,” she says.

“Am I gonna have to arrest you for bribery?” he smirks, grabbing her by the waist again. 

“Maybe you will,” she says, and kisses him again. “C’mon, isn’t our food getting cold?”

She’s smirking as she pulls away and _god _she’s hot. Strands of hair fluttering around her face, dark eyes gleaming. She unlocks the door to her apartment and he follows her in. They place their takeout on the counter and she tells him where to find plates - “Second drawer down on the left” - because she’s fancy enough to eat her takeout with plates, apparently, instead of out of the foil tubs. She’s unwrapping the food and his stomach is growling, even though he rather wants to skip this bit and go straight to bed, when there’s a sound from deeper in the apartment and he stiffens on instinct.

She’s frowning. She sets down the food and moves down the hall, heels clacking on the floor. “Jonathan? Will?” she tries, softly. 

Then there’s a muffled voice and she kicks her shoes off and all but runs down the hallway, ducking into a room at the end, and he follows. He has to follow, because maybe it’s Lonnie. Maybe she needs help. Maybe she needs him. 

It’s not Lonnie, though.

The younger kid, Will, is hunched over the toilet, Joyce now next to him, rubbing his back as he retches. She looks up at Hopper, and there’s a moment of wordless communication before he retreats back to the kitchen. Her kid was sick, he remembers. He never thought to ask what it was or if it’s still here. 

He makes a start on his beef lo mein (it’s goddamn good lo mein) and he’s finished it before Joyce emerges. She looks tired, worried. None of that happy glow from earlier. “Hey,” she says, quietly, tugging her takeout towards herself and picking at a slice of chicken. “Sorry about this.”

“You have nothing to apologise for,” he says. He means it.

“I know, I just-” she sighs. “He’s much better, he is, but every so often-”

“You don’t have to explain, Joyce.” His hand falls onto hers and she doesn’t pull away. “Really, you don’t.”

She brings her other hand up to her hair and releases it from its knot, letting it cascade down her shoulders. He swallows hard. She’s so beautiful. “Thanks,” she says, tiredly. “Listen, I know this isn’t- this isn’t what you wanted, so you can go if you-”

“Joyce,” he interrupts, more forcefully than he intended. She blinks at him. He hates that she thinks like this, like he’s disappointed, like he came here for sex and nothing more, like he’ll take it out on her. He won’t. He won’t ever. “Do you want me to stay?”

Hesitantly, like she’s giving the wrong answer, she nods. “Yes,” she whispers. 

He kisses her, even though she tastes of lemongrass and soy. “Then I will.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> long time no see!! i'm sorry aha but i am DETERMINED to finish this au if it kills me lol i hate that there are incomplete stories on my profile.... ugh
> 
> anyway. let me know your thoughts pls 🥺


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “thank you,” he says. “for, y’know, working with me on this. you didn’t have to and you’re putting so much into it-”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please see the edited author's note on the first chapter re: this story and ACAB.

Joyce leaves early for court the next morning. He’s ready to come with her but she shakes her head: “It’s probably best we’re not seen together today,” she says to him, regretfully. At least he thinks it’s regret. He hopes. They spent the night lying side by side, his arm casually thrown across her waist like that was a thing they did, like they were in love.

But he arrives at the courtroom alone.

Brenner looks smart and sneering beside his attorney at the front; Joyce, on the other table, is sorting through her papers without looking at him. _Good,_ Hopper thinks. Brenner and his team will probably try to psych her out about the whole thing, but she’s wise enough not to let him. He knows that.

He’s attended arraignment court before, so he’s well prepared for how boring it is. A summary of the charges, _how do you plead_. Brenner standing up and stating “Not guilty,” crisply and coldly, his eyes sweeping over the courtroom full of contempt. 

“People on bail?”

Joyce stands up and he pays a little more attention. “Given Dr. Brenner’s financial resources, we believe he is a significant flight risk. The people ask for one million.”

Brenner’s lawyer stands up too. “My client has no priors and has cooperated with this court more than willingly over the duration of the case. He fully intends to show up in court and defend himself against these baseless charges.”

“They are hardly baseless, Your Honor, and as a likely accomplice of his has already destroyed important evidence it’s not beyond doubt that Dr. Brenner would try to do so as well.” 

“Thank you, Counsellor,” the judge says, rather sternly, a reprimand, but it looks like Joyce has won. He nods. “Bail is set at nine hundred thousand dollars.”

Afterwards Hopper finds her on a bench in the hallway, typing rapidly on her phone. She doesn’t notice him until he touches her shoulder, and then she looks up with a frown. “Hey,” she says, warily, and looks around. _Shit_. He forgot that they were doing the whole distance thing - but surely they’re allowed to talk to each other? “Sorry, I’m just texting Kali, I need to be sure she’s willing to testify so I can file a motion to include her testimony. And then the defense will file a motion to exclude it, and if the judge doesn’t agree that it shows pattern of behaviour…” 

He wants to kiss her so fucking badly.

Instead he just considers her, one hand holding her phone, the other fiddling with her necklace, her large eyes studying him anxiously. “Thank you,” he says. “For, y’know, working with me on this. You didn’t have to and you’re putting so much into it-”

She smiles at him. “Stop,” she says. “You know this means a lot to me too.”

He does. She stands up, and without even thinking about it he helps her into her coat. When she turns back to look at him her eyes are warning but she hasn’t stepped away from him. She’s so close he can feel the warmth of her body. He coughs, a little awkwardly. “So… what’s the plan now?”

“Well, Brenner will post bail, there’s no doubt about that. So we need to keep an eye on him. And we need to track down his accomplice.”

He thinks for a moment. “Hey, maybe that’s the silver lining. Brenner gets out, he goes straight to this accomplice of his.”

“Is he gonna be that stupid?” She narrows her eyes.

He shrugs. “Not stupid. Cocky. Did you see his face? He doesn’t care about any of this.”

“Yeah. You’re right about that.” She fiddles with the strap of her bag and looks up and down the hallway. “You wanna get an early lunch?”

Does he. Of course he does.

She takes him to the sushi place she mentioned yesterday, which brings him to ask, over chopsticks and sashimi, “How did it go with Nancy?”

She makes a face. “I’m pretty sure she thinks I’m a mess… which isn’t far from the truth, but it’s a little disconcerting to have your son’s girlfriend looking at you like she’s your boss.”

He snorts a laugh. “If you’re a mess, what does that make me?”

She looks at him for a moment, before the humor in her eyes slowly dies. “Hopper-” She sets her chopsticks down and reaches for his hand - hesitantly he lets her take it. “What Holloway said yesterday-”

He swallows. He knew this was coming. It couldn’t not come, what with them living and breathing a job that’s all about uncovering secrets, what with them revelling in each other’s skin every night. “You wanna know what happened.”

“You don’t have to-” She looks away. His thumb traces absent circles on her skin. “You don’t have to tell me. If you don’t want to. It’s- it’s none of my-”

“I want to,” he says, cutting her off. Her eyes jump to his, startled. “I just- it’s never been the right time.”

“And now?”

“And now,” he allows, “it is.” He takes a deep breath. “I told you about my ex wife, right? Diane, she was a teacher. We- uh, we had a kid. A little girl. Sara. She-“

He’s choking up. His eyes are stinging and there’s no way he can eat anything more - he pushes his plate away. Then Joyce is dropping some bills on the table and tugging him up by his wrist and taking him outside, where she lights a cigarette and hands it to him pink with her lipstick. He takes a drag, feeling his pounding heart rate slowly decrease. She’s looking at him not pityingly - just frankly, patiently.

Finally he feels able to continue. “You know I was working Homicide at the time. I remember- Murray and I, my guy from CSU, we were working pretty closely, we’d just cracked a big case, our big break. I was looking at a promotion. That evening- we ordered pizza for the whole precinct, drank beer until the small hours. My phone was off.”

He sees her eyes widen, lips twisting into a horrified line. 

“And then when I got back to our apartment…” He takes another shaky breath. “Diane was waiting up for me. I knew as soon as I saw her face- something awful had happened.”

Joyce’s hand has found his. He winds their fingers together and takes another drag of the cigarette to stall - but he’s gotta get it out eventually. And if he doesn’t tell her, no doubt someone else will.

“Sara was killed in a hit and run. One of the busiest intersections near our apartment, a load of CCTV, the guy just drove off without even slowing. I- Diane broke down. Wouldn’t get out of bed for weeks. I did the opposite. I ran myself into the ground trying to catch the guy even though it wasn’t my job, even though each day I was getting called into my lieutenant's office and he’d tell me to stop but I wouldn’t, I couldn’t-”

He stops, staring into the distance. Joyce’s thumb is rubbing circles into his skin. “Did you catch him?”

He shakes his head. “Everyone kept telling me, it’s just- it’s just one of those crimes, y’know? This is New York, they’re dime a dozen. I wasn’t special. Sara wasn’t special. But I kept- I kept seeing her everywhere, her and that guy in the car, in cases that had nothing to do with her-”

“So they transferred you.”

He nods, breathes in more smoke. “Diane divorced me around the same time. It was the right thing, the transfer and the divorce, it’s just-” He swallows. “I failed Sara. I failed her. And now because of that I’m stuck where I can’t make any difference at all, just closing meaningless fraud cases day after day…”

“That’s why this case means so much to you,” she says quietly. “That’s why you want a motive.” He looks at her. Her eyes are glimmering with unshed tears, and somehow he feels a rush of gratitude. “I can’t pretend I can understand what it’s like, but…”

The thing is, he thinks she does. Not the whole of it - losing a child is a grief like no other - but this case is a milestone for her too. And they have to succeed. He’s not sure what he’ll do if they don’t. Another young girl failed, no justice served. That can’t happen.

“What’s the plan for this afternoon, then?” he asks, clearing his throat. His voice comes out gritty and rough. 

Her eyes widen and she looks genuinely apologetic: “Oh, Hop, I have to get back to court. I’m sorry. But I get the feeling from the DA that he wants to rush this through, so the trial shouldn’t be too long after the Christmas recess - so hopefully my caseload will be lighter and I can actually give this my official attention because they’re finally paying me for it.” She gives him a light smile. “Christmas recess is ten days. You have any plans?”

Does he have any plans. None, except maybe grabbing a slightly bigger slice of pizza from the stall outside his apartment (open every day of the year, he’s checked) and piling a bit of pre-cooked turkey on it while watching _Die Hard_ (because that is a Christmas movie, so sue him). He doesn’t say this out loud, though, because it would sound more depressing that it actually is. (He rather likes _Die Hard_.) “No, not really.”

Her eyebrows crease together - it’s faintly adorable. “Well, we’re staying in the city, just the three of us. You can- you can come round for dinner over the recess, if you want. I can’t promise any miracles with my cooking, but-”

“Sounds great,” he says, because it does. 

She smiles at him. “I gotta go, but I’ll call you, okay? Talk to your CSU guy, get him working on it. We’re nearly there. We’re nearly done with this.” 

He smiles at her too, but that’s not exactly what she means. _We’re nearly done with this_ means _you’re nearly done with this_ \- her role is just beginning. Though by her showing in court earlier, he’s not too worried.

\--

The Christmas recess begins two days later. He doesn’t know what he’s expecting - maybe for Joyce to have the full ten days off, and to have turned her living room into the hub of the investigation - but it’s not this. He turns up at her apartment that Saturday evening after his shift (because crime doesn’t take a recess, even antiques fraud), bottle of admittedly cheap Merlot in hand, and she opens the door wearing a creamy turtleneck that swallows her up and- are those reading glasses?

Joyce touches them ruefully at his look. “I know, I know, I never wear them but when I’m working from home Jonathan insists.”

“He- wait, working? What happened to the recess?”

She looks at him over the wire frames, with raised eyebrows. The effect is rather intimidating. “You really thought because court’s not in session that I have nothing to do?”

“Um. Yes?” 

She rolls her eyes at him. The apartment smells like onions, garlic, and tomato - “Homemade bolognese,” she explains, and his mouth waters - and when they reach the kitchen they find Jonathan sitting at the kitchen island, periodically stirring the sauce and jotting the answers to a crossword with a furrowed brow. He looks up warily as Hopper comes in. But he’s clearly been warned that Hopper’s here for dinner, because he says nothing and after a moment he returns to his crossword. 

Hopper gives her the red wine. She produces a corkscrew and opens it, pours out three glasses with a glass at Jonathan, and whispers, “Shh, I won’t tell if you won’t.” Hopper looks at her, half in love, and nods.

There’s Christmas music playing faintly on the radio and he takes a sip of his wine as he watches her measure out spaghetti. “So did you get anywhere with CSU?” she asks. Jonathan looks between them and quickly takes the hint - Hopper wonders how often his mother talks shop at home, and how often he has to make himself scarce. He disappears as Joyce shouts after him, “Dinner in ten minutes!” 

“Not really,” Hopper admits, drawing them back to the matter at hand. “I tried to follow the lead of the accomplice at the Burberry store but no one saw anything. And we’ve been watching Brenner, but so far he’s given us nothing.”

She nods sympathetically. “We’ve got time.” She takes a sip of her wine; it stains her lip purple. Suddenly he wants to kiss her, badly, but he’s not sure if he’s allowed to. Here, when her older son has only just left the room.

But she makes the decision for him. She leans up and captures his lips in hers, her glasses bumping the bridge of his nose, her hands clutching at his collar to help her keep her balance. He melts into the warmth of it, the taste of the wine on her tongue. Gone is the silk and starch: here in her apartment she’s all soft cashmere and loose, messy hair.

Finally they draw apart. She takes her glasses off a little sheepishly, a flush on her cheeks, but she’s smiling. “After dinner I’ll tell you about what I’ve been working on,” she says. “It could work out well. But first, help me serve up.”

Obediently, he sets out bowls and cutlery under her direction. She ladles pasta and sauce into them, which despite her doubts smells divine, and then the four of them sit down together to eat. Jonathan still looks at him warily - that is, until Hopper launches into a discussion of his friend in the Arts department at NYU (courtesy of connections through Diane that haven’t been completely severed) and he brightens.

Joyce looks on, smiling behind her wine, and for a while her dinner table feels like home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, long time no see!! sorry it's been so long, but thank sadie and barb for encouraging (read: bullying me) to write this chapter lmao  
and thank mya for the joyce-with-glasses concept.  
if you're still here, let me know what you think!!


End file.
